1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to safety caps for medicine bottles and the like, and more particularly it relates to a screw-type safety cap which may be locked to prevent young children from opening it.
Various state and federal regulations require that medicine bottles, poison bottles, and the like, have safety caps which cannot be opened by young children. Such caps are typically tested by placing them in the hands of children below the age of five years and are considered successful if a large percentage of the children are unable to open them within a five minute period. Such caps must, however, be readily openable by an adult, and it is expected that as a child matures, he will also be able to open them.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A number of containers with safety caps or stoppers have been invented. In one design, the user must obtain the correct rotational alignment between a lug on the cap and an opening in the container lip so that the cap can be lifted off. In another design, the user must simultaneously push the cap downward against the container lip and rotate the cap relative to the container so that the threads on the container engage those on the cap, and the cap can be screwed off the container.
Both these approaches have been reasonably successful in confounding young children and preventing them from gaining access to potentially harmful products inside the containers. Unfortunately, such locking caps have often bewildered the adult who wishes to use the bottled product. For example, with the first prior art locking-cap cited above, even after the user has managed to align the lug with the opening in the bottle lip, the tightness of the fit often makes it difficult to pry off the bottle cap. In the second example, the instructions which are printed on the bottle cap ("press down before turning") are considered by many to be ambiguous and by others to be downright deceptive.
It is therefore desirable to provide a locking container cap which requires sufficient skill and perception so that young children are unable to fathom its intricacies, while being sufficiently straightforward and obvious in operation so that adults and more mature children are able to remove the cap without difficulty.